Sunday, May 03, 2009

Real Christians Love To Torture - Just Another Crusade With A Little Spanish Inquisition on the Side

UPDATE: 10:42 & 11:26 AM, May 3, 2009

-My Sunday Sermon on the Brutal History of Christianity and its love of War , Death, Destruction and a bit of torture on the side-These Manichean influenced Christians believe in an actual battle between God & -Evil being played out in Human History-Christianity represents the Good & God-Islam represents Evil, Satan -Is the so called War on Terror just a continuation of the Christian Crusades or a continuation of Western Colonialism

Anyway it is Sunday the day on which Christians flock to religious services whether traditional churches or the Megachurches of one sort or another. Whatever they are taught there seems to entail for some reason a belief in the use of "torture"- Is this really surprising the Christians from the early centuries of Christianity after it became the official religion of the Roman Empire starting by banishing and later executing so called Heretics those who did not agree with the official doctrines & dogma. Then the Christians decided they couldn't allow the Pagans who believed in the old Roman Gods or other Gods to practice their religion. So the Christians banned all other religions and began killing a few million Pagans .

The number of Pagans killed by the Christian Church of the Roman Empire was far greater than the number of Christians killed or Martyred by the Pagan Roman Empire. This is not an historical fact which most Christians are aware of and it is a fact often glossed over by Christian influenced historians.

Later of course the Christians decided to engage in an unnecessary series of wars known as the Christian Crusades again in which another million or more Muslims , Christians and Jews were murdered by the European Christians.

When Pope Urban announced the First Crusade he said "God Wills It" and he promised that those who took part in the Crusade would obtain absolution and so would be guaranteed a place in Heaven so murdering Infidels would give them a ticket to Heaven.( odd isn't this what some Muslim leaders teach their followers that they will go straight to paradise if they die in the Jihad) The Christians who vowed to take part in the Crusade first took part in the killing of those they considered infidels who lived in Europe and so these Christian Crusaders ruthlessly massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews and thousands of Christians whom they believed to be heretics . When they arrived in the Holy Land they often as not made no distinction between Muslims or Jews or even Christians who lived there . This was especially the case when they took Jerusalem. They reasoned that Christians who had for a few hundred years lived more or less peaceably among the Muslims were traitors to the Church. It should be noted the Crusaders killed men, women ,and children.

These Crusades morphed over the centuries and were not just aimed at the Holy Land and the Middle East but also occurred in Eastern Europe etc. and were combined with the expulsion and pogroms against the Jews of Europe.

The Spanish Inquisition which Christians seemed to be proud of led to the deaths of thousands and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Inquisition actually was established around 1200 AD and ended around 1808 and it was not unique to Spain but spread throughout Europe and later to the European colonies.

The Inquisition was a Roman Catholic tribunal for discovery and punishment of heresy, which was marked by the severity of questioning and punishment and lack of rights afforded to the accused.

While many people associate the Inquisition with Spain and Portugal, it was actually instituted by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) in Rome. A later pope, Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition, in 1233, to combat the heresy of the Abilgenses, a religious sect in France. By 1255, the Inquisition was in full gear throughout Central and Western Europe; although it was never instituted in England or Scandinavia.

...By the second half of the 18th century, the Inquisition abated, due to the spread of enlightened ideas and lack of resources. The last auto de fe in Portugal took place on October 27, 1765. Not until 1808, during the brief reign of Joseph Bonaparte, was the Inquisition abolished in Spain. An estimated 31,912 heretics were burned at the stake, 17,659 were burned in effigy and 291,450 made reconciliations in the Spanish Inquisition. In Portugal, about 40,000 cases were tried, although only 1,800 were burned, the rest made penance.

The Inquisition was not limited to Europe; it also spread to Spanish and Portugese colonies in the New World and Asia. Many Jews and Conversos fled from Portugal and Spain to the New World seeking greater security and economic opportunities. Branches of the Portugese Inquisition were set up in Goa and Brazil. Spanish tribunals and auto de fes were set up in Mexico, the Philippine Islands, Guatemala, Peru, New Granada and the Canary Islands. By the late 18th century, most of these were dissolved.

During the period known as the Reconquesta Jews initially in Spain were permitted to remain in Spain if they would convert to Christianity -many converted and were referred to as Conversos but then they were persecuted because it was believed that these conversos were secretly still practicing Judaism and so were were brought before the Inquisition to be tortured and tried and then hanged, or quartered or burned at the stake in the Auto de Fete - one of those wonderfully loving acts of Christians when crowds would gather to watch human beings being set on fire. Much of this was just another form of anti-semitism which I have argued before is deeply embedded into the Christian Church and the Christian psyche . The oppression of the Jews continued through the centuries in Europe and justified by a long line of Popes .

From time to time a Pope would take power who insisted that Jews be treated more justly. Of course the widespread almost universal hatred and distrust of Jews was typical of most European countries.In most countries in Europe the Jews were confined to the ghettos and their freedom was severely restricted. The Church's position was that the Jews as the killers of Christ who refused to accept Jesus as Messiah must be made to suffer but they were not to be completely obliterated as the Jews were to be witnesses to the triumph of Christianity and there needed to be a surviving remnant to witness Christ Second Coming when all Jews would be condemned except for some 144,000 who would take Jesus as their Messiah. Anyway This form of virulent violent anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in the NAZI Regimes " Final Solution " and the death of six-million Jews.

Now during the centuries of Christian dominance in Europe besides the various Inquisitions and the on-going Crusades the Christians entered another violent virulent phase in their attack on those they believed to be witches. It is estimated that at least a couple of million witches were captured, tortured, tried and then killed. The belief in actual witches who were acting as servants of Satan was widespread and went unquestioned for centuries. Even America was affected by the Witch Hysteria which culminated in the Salem Witch trials . The accused individuals had little hope of a fair hearing and were often tortured to get their confessions in which they would name other individuals thereby increasing the number of witches secretly practicing Witchcraft .

According to many in our society today especially in the United States and according to some in the Mainstream Media such as Fox News and CNN Torture is considered an effective means by which to get information from some criminal or a terrorists. Historically we know that what one gets from the use of torture is not reliable information but rather false confessions and lies told in order to appease the torturer so that they would stop the torture.

Anyway the point of all this short history of Christianity is that we should not be surprised that those who consider themselves the "True Christians" ie Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians would see nothing inherently wrong with the use of brute force or of torture to rid the world of evil. To them as many of their Media stars claim is that Islam is an evil religion which is out to destroy at any cost Christianity. In fact when they talk about the Prophet Muhammad they characterize the Prophet as being a deceiver, a liar, a false prophet, as in league with Satan , and as a murderer and pedophile etc. This was the view Christians had during the Crusades and it seems to have never really been extinguished by the Church in fact Christian religious leaders especially the American Evangelicals such as Pastor John Hagee and their TV superstars have encouraged such negative beliefs about the Prophet Muhammad and Islam.

Urban exaggerates the danger to Europe and to the Holy LandJews and Christians were not that badly treated in Muslim countries- they were better treated than Jews or Muslims were treated in Europe as Bush and Cheney and other Good Christians & Neocons and their Media Stars today demonize Islam and all Muslims.

As the dangerous bubble-head Ann Coulter has said Americans should invade all the Muslim Countries and get them to convert to Christianity or if not kill them all. But she is only one of many of these conservative Christian TV or Media stars who preach such hate just listen to Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Bachman , Lou Dobbs , Michelle Malkin, Fox News or Republicans like Newt Gingrich and one sees their hatred of Muslims and of Islam has no bounds . They believe that 9/11 was a wake-up call to Western Society and especially to Christianity to purify itself and get back to its roots and to finish off Islam. And so the U.S. military took this perverted belief with them into Iraq and Afghanistan in which soldiers are told all Iraqis and all Afghans are guilty and that they should show them no mercy.

So we shouldn't be surprised that a born again Christian fundamentalist like George Bush would have any problem with torturing and abusing Muslim prisoners or to turning the country of Iraq into rubble all in the name of defending America and spreading a conservative Evangelical Fundamentalists form of Christianity which appears more rooted in Old Testament Fire & Brimstone and a belief in a vengeful and wrathful GOD who shows & demands no mercy for the Unbelievers.

These ultra-Conservative Christians rarely if ever refer for instance to Jesus' Sermon on The Mount which they believe presents a far too soft version of who Jesus was in their view. Their Jesus is the one who "Brings not peace but the sword" who wants to root out the demonic forces at work all around us - their Jesus is far from being "Meek and Mild" but rather is a cruel Taskmaster out to rid the world of those who are against God- so their Jesus is not interested in turning the other cheek but rather taking up arms against the enemies of their God.

As President George Bush famously or infamously proclaimed after the 9/11 attacks you are either with us or against us there is no middle ground no shades of gray it is all or nothing, good versus evil . He even referred later on to the Axis of Evil . The explanation given was that those who were enemies of the United States were its enemies because America was a God Fearing Christian Nation founded under or the resultof God's Will and therefore those against America were the enemies of God. Given that view those on America's side or on God's side are acting according to God's Will like the Medieval Crusaders or Torquemade of the Spanish Inquisition and so whatever these divine inspired individuals do can not be judged by mere humans.

Christians Think Torture Rocks!!- May o1, 2009

Moyers 1/5: Torture and Its Consequences May 01, 2009Watch the rest on YOUTUBE or at PBS.com

Spanish Judge Investigates Guantanamo Torture Cases-May 1, 2009NTDTV

A Spanish judge started a criminal investigation on Wednesday (April 29) into alleged torture of detainees inside the U.S. base at Guantanamo. Judge, Baltasar Garzon who once tried to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, said in a ruling he would investigate both those who carried out torture and those who ordered or cooperated with it.

And allegations that the Bush Regime scapegoated the guards at Abu Ghraib to cover up the fact that these techniques had become official policy and were being used in many of the facilities under U.S. control.

Prison guards jailed for abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq are planning to appeal against their convictions on the ground that recently released CIA torture memos prove that they were scapegoats for the Bush Administration.

The photographs of prisoner abuse at the Baghdad jail in 2004 sparked worldwide outrage but the previous administration, from President Bush down, blamed the incident on a few low-ranking “bad apples” who were acting on their own.

The decision by President Obama to release the memos showed that the harsh interrogation tactics were approved and authorised at the highest levels of the White House.

Some of the guards who were convicted of abuse want to return to court and argue that the previous administration sanctioned the abuse but withheld its role from their trials.

...Charles Gittins, a lawyer who represents Charles Graner, the ringleader of the guards who is serving a ten-year sentence, said that the memos proved his long-held contention that Graner and the other defendants, including his former lover Lynndie England, could never have invented tactics such as stress positions and the use of dogs on their own.

“Once the pictures came out, the senior officials involved in the decision-making, they knew. They knew they had to have a cover story. It was the ‘bad apples’ led by Charles Graner,” Mr Gittins told The Washington Post.